


A Spider In Her Web

by orphan_account



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Rapunzel (Fairy Tale), Rapunzel - All Media Types, Tangled (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Evil, Dark, Fairy Tale Retellings, Flashbacks, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rapunzel rules the lands with an iron fist, and everyone is fearful. </p><p>But then a young girl seeking nothing but food for her family ventures into the woods and everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Spider In Her Web

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited so any mistakes you find, please tell me.
> 
> Enjoy!

As she passed by a spindly tree, Maisy ducked around the legs of the man hanging from a branch. His glassy eyes were distressed and the golden hair entangling his neck gleamed in the weak light filtering through the thicket of branches above. She shuddered at the hair snaking like thick serpents across the forest floor and tried to imagine the woods without the hair.

Her mother once spoke of a time when sunlight shone brightly on the faces of the villagers and the witch ruled her lands with a kind but firm hand.

After she was killed by a spooked horse, her daughter Rapunzel took over. Rapunzel was a terror. Her mother had spoiled her, built her a high tower so she could be above ordinary people. In this tower she spent all her time singing and tending to her long, shining, golden locks. 

She soon learnt how to control her hair as if it was another limb. It began with just snatching small animals off the forest floor below her and taking them into her tower, from which a great screaming could be heard for hours afterwards. Then she started to lure in young men with her lovely voice as it echoed through the valley. She told them that she was lonely and they grasped the thick mane as it hung from her window. Sometimes they reached the top before they were caught, and they got a kiss for their accomplishment, but more often than not they would be captured by the wild tresses and pulled inside the tower, never to be seen again.

Maisy let out a short scream as she felt something twist around her ankle before her mouth was smothered by hair. She tripped on a branch but did not hit the ground, instead being lifted above the undergrowth to come face to face with a pale girl. 

The girl’s hair was pulled taut, making a halo of strands around her head, and a small smile trembled on her face as her bare feet balanced on crisscrossing lengths of hair hanging from the trees. Her eye sockets were gaping holes, crusted with dried blood, their sightless gaze tearing holes, it seemed, through Maisy’s soul.

“What makes you venture into my forest, small one?” she said in a lilting, sickly sweet voice.

Maisy’s voice shook in fear, “Milady, my family is starving and we have so money to purchase food. I came here in hopes of finding some edible plants or some game to cease the little one’s cries.”

She thought back to the tale, how when Rapunzel was put in charge she went mad with the power, doling out increasingly severe punishments and isolating her territory from the surrounding lands.

Many tried to overthrow her, were sentenced to a fate worse than death for their efforts. The only person to come close to killing her managed to gouge her eyes out before she could apprehend him. 

But loss of vision did not weaken her. Her hair became her eyes, wrapping around every twig in the forest and she perched in its centre, a spider in her web.

As Maisy was recalling this she watched Rapunzel consider her previous words and, it seemed, come to a decision.

“Well, I certainly can’t let you live, I have a reputation to maintain. The only question is how you shall die. Do you have any preferences?”

At those words Maisy began to shake with fear and she scrambled to reach the hunting knife she kept in her satchel. When she found it, she began slashing and hacking at the hair binding her until she fell back down to the ground. Rapunzel sent locks of hair shooting at her, all of which Maisy managed to deflect with her knife.

When she started to run out of the forest Rapunzel dropped out of the trees to block her way, limp like a rag doll. Startled, Maisy struck out with her knife, piercing Rapunzel right through her stomach and cutting off whatever she was about to say. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she silently clutched at her abdomen and the blood already darkening her pale skin.

As she stopped moving, her hair abruptly went limp and disintegrated into ash, which was borne away on the breeze that suddenly flowed through the trees. Sunlight tentatively made its way past the twisted boughs to alight on the girl standing in wonder, and the corpse, dead at her feet.


End file.
